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Monthly Archives: December 2009

Quico says: I’m still not over Chávez’s speech in Copenhagen last week. It’s been a long time since Hugo Chávez has sent my blood pressure to those lofty levels. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but the speech’s mass of contradictions grabs me, calls at me. It is Exhibit A in this blog’s raison d’etre…

Quico and Juan Cristobal say: What do you think would happen if the head of one of the world’s five largest oil companies started lecturing the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen about the evils of global warming? How do you think the most esteemed delegates to the world’s premier forum on the pressing issue…

Quico says: …rumors, partly fueled by Aristóbulo’s keynote address to the National Assembly, are now heavy that Chávez is considering launching a fresh constituyente – a Constitutional Convention to draft yet another new constitution. Crazy enough to be true? Comments are now disabled on this site.Please comment on the new site.

Quico says: Venezuela is far from the first country where an autocratic regime has used its economic muscle to systematically punish dissidents where it hurts: in their pocketbooks. It may, however, be the first where the government has left an evidentiary trail meaty enough for economists to pick over and analyze. The following slide is…

Juan Cristobal says: Chile held the first round of Presidential voting yesterday, and since I’m married to the place Quico asked me to pitch in. While most news services focused on the strong showing of right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera and the stiff problems facing the governing Concertación coalition, to me the real story was the…

Quico says: As I think about it, the truly newsworthy aspect of the jailing of the judge who freed Eligio Cedeño isn’t that they jailed her – hell, that’s almost normal – but that they jailed the whole damn court! We’re talking bailiffs jailed for carrying out a judge’s order to release a prisoner. Apparently,…

Quico says: The decision to jail judge María Lourdes Afiuni, following a bizarre series of events that saw Hugo Chávez flip out after the judge ordered – apparently without permission – the release of disgraced Bolibanquero Eligio Cedeño (who promptly fled the country), is a timely reminder that, no matter how bad you think things…